Even after I'm living
by Lavenderpaw
Summary: What if a lifetime of acceptance was all it took?


**A/N: **This has nothing to do with the other installments after Twilight.

At twenty-three…

He sat cradling her against his rock solid chest, steel tendons flexing carefully as Edward hummed the melody that cast his mortal love into a world of safety and surrender. Bella's warm skin reminded him of when he was human… it made him feel alive inside to have a body of such soft proportion, of such debilitating delicateness cradled in his arms. Even if it were wrong, just having the responsibility of protecting the innocent soul was beautiful.

And how much more beautiful she would be when she was older. He licked his lips.

* * *

At thirty-five…

"It happened so fast." Bella cried shakily into his arms. "Jacob called to tell me about it."

"Renee' said she would be here first thing in the morning." Edward told his wife, holding her squishy love handles between his solid arms as the back of her white knit sweater was stretching tightly away from being stuffed right into her caramel slacks. "Relax please."

"How can you still stand to love me?" She whispered from his chest cavity, her rounded heart-shaped face red with embarrassment. "You're always so well-posed, and I'm just-."

"Human." Edward cut her off quickly. "Bella, love, I hold no resentment towards what you are going through. I feel human because you're being human. Good or bad."

"And for better or worse." Bella smiled against a wave of tears.

"Yes," He pushed her hair back and pressed his frozen lips to her forehead. "I promised."

* * *

At forty-eight…

"I'm scared," She squeezed his hand for reassurance. Edward looked down at her with a calm look, only the fear that her life was in jeopardy touched his golden butter eyes as her over-sized hands were closed around his. "How can you stand it? I'm just big and gross."

He smiled at her. "Remember, Bella, how you always wanted to hold me just once."

She smiled back at him, her enormous jowls stretching as her over-puffed lips parted.

Laughing quietly, giddily, she opened her massive flesh-hanging arms and Edward came right up into them. Bella sighed contently as the entirety of her lover's cold body pressed into her great girth. She looked down as he wrapped himself up in her uncombed locks of brunette hair, inhaling her deeply into his stone sculpted nostrils, and for once she did not cry. Bella instead closed her meaty arms around her lover and enveloped him in warmth.

"Has the wine gotten stale yet?" She asked quietly.

"On the contrary," Edward said smugly. "It's never been sweeter."

Bella laughed with quiet tears in her soft brown eyes.

* * *

At seventy-four…

"You've never looked better, love." Edward said with a grin over at his wife.

Bella turned to grin back at him; her shock of smooth grey hair was tied up tightly in a rubber band on her head as she and he power-walked at a brisk pace around the block.

"It's not easy to accept a life free of botox, pills and surgery."

Edward's expression turned insightful. "But maybe it is easier to accept your life as it is."

She breathed deeply, blew a kiss up at the brilliant blue sky and hopped up into his arms.

"Ha, _ha_!"

At ninety-eight…

* * *

His footsteps were deep, squeaking and heavy as he carefully made his way to her room. The vampire had a bottle of old-fashioned cough syrup in one hand, and a spoon grasped in the other one. As he entered, the rage of his suppressed memories at biting her came to the surface. It always did when his love wasn't in good health. Edward sighed, turned on one foot and backed his way into the room where Bella lay hooked up to a heart monitor.

"Edward…" She reached out to him shakily, "I want you to read something. It's from this sweet book I read, but it's a poem that I decided to write for you before things are done."

He smiled tentatively, took it from her vein-creased hand and read it aloud.

_I'll love you forever, I'll like for always. Even after I'm living, in my heart you'll be._

Edward reached up and touched his eyes as there was a strange feeling in them, he gazed down and gasped in horrendous shock --- his fingers were wet. Slowly, steadily, his skin began to feel warmer, frozen teeth began to numb like the after effects of a dentist's visit and he felt a sense of normalcy he would only feel when he was with Bella coming back.

The seventeen-year-old boy looked up to a wall mirror and saw a pair of green eyes were staring back at him, but when Edward looked down he saw that Bella was smiling at him.

And then her brown eyes closed.

The End.


End file.
